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| Haranguing the lynch mob by the Henry Clay Statue, New Orleans |
“We urge the Congress to enact at the earliest possible date a Federal anti-lynching law, so that the influence of the Federal government may be wielded to exterminate this hideous crime.” – Republican National Platform, 1924
“Lynching has always been the means for protection, not of white women, but of profits.” – Walter White: Rope and Faggot, v, 1929
The city of New Orleans was founded by the French in 1718 near the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, overlooking an important trading route. They dubbed it Nouvelle-Orléans in honor of Phillip II, Duke of Orléans. From its inception the city had a reputation as being a magnet that attracted many of the lower elements of civilized society. Since much of the population back then consisted of fur trappers, deported galley slaves, gold prospectors, fugitives fleeing French justice, etc., this is hardly surprising. Even many if not most of the soldiers sent to garrison the fort guarding the fledgling city were of the baser sort, as letters of complaint sent by Louis Billouart, Chevalier de Kerlerec, governor of the French colony of Louisiana (1753-63), attested.
The French were forced to cede the city and the entire territory of French Louisiana west of the Mississippi River to the Spanish Empire at the conclusion of the Seven Years War (1756-1763). Spanish suzerainty over the area was marked by two great fires that gutted the city (1788, 1794). However, this period also saw the groundwork laid for the region’s sugar industry. Commerce also grew significantly under Spanish rule. The Spanish also rebuilt the city according to their specifications. People who visit the French Quarter today will note the architecture shows a strong Spanish influence.
Spain quietly ceded New Orleans and the territory of Spanish Louisiana (under pressure by Napoleon Bonaparte) at the secret Third Treaty of San Ildefonso (Oct. 1st, 1800). French control, however, would not remain for long. Napoleon, desperate for cash to finance his impending war with Great Britain, agreed to sell the city of New Orleans and the whole of the territory of French Louisiana to the new republic of the United States of America for the paltry sum of only $15 million (approx. $213 million in today’s dollars)!
The Napoleonic wars that ravaged Europe allowed the United States the opportunity to exert its control over the city and surrounding territories. Otherwise, the nascent republic would most assuredly have had to eventually contend with British hegemony in the region. Many Americans today might be surprised to learn the news of the purchase, which effectively doubled the size of the country, was not well-received by many Americans living at the time. In fact, opposition to it was so great it almost caused the splintering of the new country!
From the time of the American acquisition of New Orleans until 1840 the population of the city surged dramatically, mainly due to an influx of (mostly German and Irish) immigrants and settlers. By this time New Orleans had a population of over 100,000, making it the largest city of the South, and the fourth largest nationwide.
New Orleans’ increasing growth and economic prosperity were briefly interrupted by the American Civil War (1861-65). The city was captured by Northern forces, which recognized its strategic importance, shortly after April 28th, 1862. While fierce naval bombardments of Confederate forts were necessary to allow the Union fleet to move into position to capture the city, no actual fighting occurred in New Orleans itself. Thus, the city was taken intact and spared the destruction that befell other Southern cities such as Atlanta, Georgia.
This did not mean that all went well in New Orleans during the Union Army’s tenure of the city. Major General Benjamin Butler, commander of Federal forces, placed the city under a severe martial law. This did not sit well with the locals. Numerous outrages occurred during this time, the worst of which was Butler’s infamous General Order No. 28, which basically stipulated that any female insulting or showing disrespect to any Union soldier or officer was to be treated as a common prostitute! (1) The firestorm of protest that erupted (which was felt in both North and South and as far away as Great Britain and France) over this edict caused Butler to be removed from command on December 17th, 1862. Nevertheless, the memory of Butler’s tyranny burned in the collective consciousness of the peoples of New Orleans and would linger for decades to come.
After the end of the Civil War, New Orleans again served as the capital of the state of Louisiana until 1880. It was around this time the first large influx of immigrants from the newly created Kingdom of Italy began entering the area. The overwhelming majority of these immigrants were refugees from the conquest and destruction of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies by Piedmontese soldiers in 1861.
Following the end of the Civil War, New Orleans and the areas surrounding it were experiencing a regrowth of their economies, and manual labor was desperately needed. Prior to the war, this labor had been mainly provided by black slaves as well as German and Irish immigrants. By war’s end, though, black slaves had been emancipated. As a result of Reconstruction-era violence by the Ku Klux Klan and similar groups, many consequently left the region to seek their fortunes further north. Earlier immigrants, on the other hand, had started to “move on up” the socio-economic ladder due to the abundant opportunities available. As a result, Sicilian immigrants, who were destitute, uneducated, spoke virtually no English and were willing to work for pennies, were initially a welcome addition to the mingling of ethnicities that was New Orleans.
This is not to say there weren’t Sicilian immigrants to the area prior to the Civil War; there were, in fact. Louisiana had the largest population of “Italian” immigrants of any state in America. Almost all of these immigrants who chose to live in New Orleans were Sicilians. Very few were from Northern Italy. Many of these earlier arrivals (some of whom were former soldiers in the army of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) had fought for the Confederacy during the war. (2) By the time the new arrivals from Southern Italy/Sicily began to arrive around 1880, some of these Sicilians, like the Germans and Irish before them, had begun to establish themselves economically.
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| David Hennessy |
Tough, garrulous and inebriate, Hennessy, like so many other immigrant Irishmen had endured verbal and physical abuse at the hands of Anglo “Know-Nothings” who believed the Irish to be members of an inferior race out to make the U.S. a Catholic vassal of the Pope in Rome. At one point he and some of his fellow “specials” in the police force had been implicated in the barroom murder of a man named Fred Gruber who made the mistake of making a deprecating remark about the Irish. Due to lack of evidence, however, no charges were ever filed.
Lack of evidence, though, was not enough to satisfy Arthur Guerin, a member of the “Know-Nothings” who had cultivated a reputation as a man who would kill you as sure as look at you. Due to his connections, the lax state of law enforcement in New Orleans at the time (or both), Guerin managed to escape legal punishment for his crimes. Guerin and Hennessy “had a history”. Invited by Hennessy for a drink in a bar to settle their differences, Guerin instead dispatched Hennessy with three shots (and not of the alcoholic kind, either) to the chest. As with so many times beforehand, Guerin somehow managed to escape justice. Hennessy left behind him a grieving widow and a son: 12-y.o. David Jr. (3)
Up until that time, young David, like a good Irish Catholic lad, had been tending his studies at a local Jesuit school. Now that the family was deprived of its sole source of income, that ended. His mother managed to secure a job for him at the Metropolitan Police as a messenger. Thus began David Hennessy Jr.’s career in law enforcement.
He would take to it well. While still only a teenager he made a name for himself when he caught two adult thieves in the act, beat them mercilessly with his bare hands, then dragged them both to the local police station. When General Algernon S. Badger, head of the Metropolitan police, left the force in 1876, he dismissed everyone from their jobs so his replacement would be free to make his own appointments. Everyone that is, except one veteran police officer and young David Hennessy Jr. By the time he turned 20 he had been promoted to full detective.
Hennessy’s name would be splashed on the headlines around the world four years later when he helped capture a vicious kidnapper named Giuseppe Esposito who had fled Sicily and was hiding in New Orleans. In a fitting irony, Esposito was basically kidnapped by young Hennessy, his cousin Mike, who was also a member of the Metropolitan Police, and a private detective from New York named James Mooney. Promptly deposited on a steamship, he was eventually tried and convicted in Italy, where he spent the rest of his life in a dungeon. As would often happen to other Sicilians in ensuing years, Anglo-run newspapers would later embellish the case by reporting that Esposito was a wealthy leader in the “New Orleans Mafia” in spite of the fact no evidence existed to show he was anything other than a petty, vicious criminal on the run from Italian justice. (4)
Hennessy’s fame would soon become tarnished by a scandal involving him and his cousin Mike. David and Mike were enemies of a man named Thomas Devereaux. Devereaux, like so many other members of the Metropolitan Police, was an unsavory sort. Shortly before his fateful run-in with David and Mike, he had tried unsuccessfully to use his position as Chief of Aids (detectives) to ruin David and Mike’s careers, with disastrous results for himself. Caught in several lies, Devereaux was tried and convicted of “oppression in office” and kept on suspension pending his dismissal.
On the next day, October 13th, 1881 at 11 AM, Thomas Devereaux was in the brokerage office of John W. Fairfax when David and Mike appeared on the sidewalk outside. Shots rang out; Fairfax and his clerks dove for cover. Who fired first is a matter of dispute. What is less a matter of dispute is that Devereaux succeeded in severely wounding Mike Hennessy, who then crumpled to the floor. According to an eyewitness, before Devereaux could deliver the coup de grâce, David deftly stepped up behind him, pointed his revolver at the back of his head, and blew his brains out!
Tried for murder in April, 1882, the defense team succeeded in putting the decedent on trial, instead. Agreeing that Devereaux got what he deserved, the jury acquitted both men of murder and they were promptly set free. Their careers in law enforcement were over, though. At least Mike’s was, anyway. He moved to Texas where several years later he was shot down in cold blood while exiting a streetcar. David would have better luck; a little over six years after being forced to exit the New Orleans Metropolitan Police in disgrace, he was offered the positions of Superintendent and Chief of Police by Mayor Joseph A. Shakespeare. (5)
There was never any love lost between the Provenzanos and the Matrangas. The two families, who each controlled their own stevedore companies, vied for control of the lucrative tropical fruit trade on the docks of New Orleans. Ultimately the Matrangas would win out by underbidding the competition, winning the undying enmity of the Provenzanos in the process. On May 5th, 1890 this enmity would result in bloodshed when a group of stevedores from Matranga & Locascio co., including Tony Matranga (who with his father Sal, co-owned a bar near Poydras Market), were ambushed. A young man was killed and the rest were injured. The survivors fingered six men as the assassins: Joe Provenzano and his brother Peter, Tony Pellegrini, Nick Guillio, Tony Gianforcaro…and Gaspardo Lombardo. (6)
Capt. Joe Macheca was by this time the wealthy owner of the Macheca steamship company, which he had inherited from his adoptive father. Joe was a native-born Sicilian-American who had been orphaned at an early age. The elder Macheca, Maltese by nationality, had taken the boy in and raised him in the family business.
Joe had distinguished himself (in the eyes of many White New Orleaneans, anyway) when he led a company of armed Sicilians who dubbed themselves “the Innocents” in the violently racist Seymour-Blair presidential campaign against Ulysses S. Grant in 1868. Several years later, Macheca would again distinguish himself in the eyes of many New Orleaneans when, leading another company of Sicilians, he aided the White League (an anti-Reconstruction paramilitary group) in briefly overthrowing Louisiana Governor William P. Kellogg. In a fit of bitter irony, in spite of all this aid, Sicilians would be later termed “non-White” by the very people who had earlier accepted their aid (when it was in their interests to do so, of course).
If all this violence strikes you as odd, rest assured, it was fairly common in New Orleans (and the rest of Louisiana) around Election Day during Reconstruction. Such was politics in “the Big Easy”.
It was Macheca, along with his brothers, Salvatore Oteri (another steamship owner) and other fruit wholesalers (as members of the Fruit Laborer’s Association) who had granted Matranga and Locascio’s stevedore company the contract to work the docks. The explanation being they underbid the Provenzanos. Since this is a common practice in business, and since no one ever produced any credible evidence showing any dealings “under the table”, there was nothing sinister about it.
Shortly after the arrest of the Provenzanos and the others, Macheca (along with attorney A.D. Henriques) visited Chief David Hennessy in his office to discuss the matters of the case and what the law intended to do about it. Since Macheca was a prominent businessman in the community, and since the Provenzanos had earlier given Matranga’s company (and Macheca himself) trouble, this was not at all unusual. Add to that the fact that Macheca would often chat with Hennessy about current events; again, nothing sinister could be (or rather should be) culled from it. Unfortunately for Macheca, later events would cloud this otherwise innocuous visit.
The Provenzano trial would be an interesting one. It was at this trial the name “Mafia” was probably first head in an American courtroom. Among the oddities was the fact the police, including Chief Hennessy, testified on behalf of the defense, not the prosecution! Why would Chief Hennessy, a man supposedly sworn to protect the public against lawbreakers, testify on behalf of criminals? In spite of several legal shenanigans undertaken by the defense (including unsuccessfully attempting to paint a prosecution witness, Rocco Geraci, as a man wanted for murder in Europe), the prosecution presented a strong case against the Provenzanos.
For starters, no one could show why anyone other than the defendants would want to try to kill Matranga and his stevedores. One of the guns found at the scene of the shooting was linked by a witness to George Provenzano, brother of two of the defendants. Another gun was linked to Joe Provenzano himself. It was known the Provenzanos had earlier made threats against the Matrangas and Joe Macheca. In fact, Chief Hennessy was actually called on at one point to try to mediate between the two factions. He even found it necessary to give assurances to Joe Macheca (who feared for his safety) that he would protect him personally, if necessary. Finally, the men who were actually shot, while initially reticent to cooperate with police, eventually came forward and testified as to the identities of the perpetrators.
After only a short time, the jury returned with a verdict: guilty as charged for all the defendants (but without capital punishment). The defense immediately announced it would appeal. In fact, after filing a motion with Judge Baker (the presiding magistrate at the Provenzano trial), they succeeded in getting the convictions set aside with Baker calling for a retrial. Joe Provenzano then loudly accused Tony Matranga to the press of belonging to the “Stopiglieri”, an alleged ‘stiletto society’ who supposedly coerced the others into testifying against him and his ilk. Of course, Provenzano had virtually no evidence to substantiate any of these charges other than his say-so and several notes that could have been scribbled by anyone. (7)
The Provenzanos and their fellow prisoners were given a date for a new trial: October 17th, 1890. In the interim, they hired a new legal team to represent them, with the heady expectation that this time they would be exonerated.
On October 15th, 1890, on the last night of his life on earth, Chief David C. Hennessy finished up a meeting with Mayor Joseph A. Shakespeare and the New Orleans Police Board. The meeting concerned charges two police officers of the Eighth Precinct, Sergeant Lynch and Stableman Thibodaux, were “shaking down” local businessmen in the Algiers district (hardly a rare occurrence in New Orleans at the time). Nevertheless, due to the seriousness of the charges, and to placate angry merchants, the two officers were fired on the spot.
After the meeting ended, Hennessy spent some time with an old friend and colleague: William J. “Billy” O’Connor, who was Superintendent of Boylan’s Detective Agency, a private security agency of which Hennessy had a commercial interest and to which he had planned to return to when his term as Police Chief and Superintendent had expired.
What exactly happened afterwards depends on which source you use. There is no consensus on this among writers who have chosen to investigate Hennessy’s brutal murder and its even more brutal aftermath, which makes closure of this case virtually impossible. This writer’s version of events is by no means definitive.
After 11 PM the two decided to start for home. Making a brief stop at Dominic Virget’s saloon for a late night snack, the two men bid each other good night and separated, with O’Connor heading down Girod Street towards the river and Hennessy heading quickly up the street towards his house to avoid getting drenched. He would never make it.
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| Artist depiction of Hennessy's murder |
O’Connor heard the roar of a shotgun blast pierce the rain-soaked night. Turning quickly, he saw the flashes in the distance and heard more blasts and what sounded like a pistol firing. Running towards the flashes, he passed a Boylan cop, who followed him to the scene of the shooting. En route they came upon a city policeman and another Boylan cop who had just nabbed a black man they had found running “at full speed”. Upon reaching the corner of Basin and Girod, O’Connor was anxiously looking around for his friend, when he heard him.
“Billy…oh Billy.”
Looking down Basin Street, O’Connor saw Chief Hennessy sitting on a doorstep, and looking like he’d just been through a meat grinder! By this time about a dozen policemen and neighbors were at the scene. Hennessy continued:
“They gave it to me, but I gave ‘em back the best I could.”
Leaning towards Hennessy, O’Connor asked softly: “Who gave it you, Dave?”
Hennessy asked O’Connor to put his ear closer to his mouth, apparently finding it increasingly difficult to speak, given the severity of his wounds.
“Dagos.” was Hennessy’s reply, at least, according to O’Connor, and possibly one or two other people. Again, according to whichever source you use.
Summoning an ambulance, the police officers took Chief Hennessy to Charity Hospital, where he was examined by Dr. J.D. Bloom, the house physician. The doctor was not optimistic by what he found. Hennessy had been shot several times, mostly through the left side. One wound was superficial; another lodged in his right leg below the knee; three were serious but not immediately life-threatening. One, however, gave Dr. Bloom cause for grave concern: a slug that had pierced both of Hennessy’s lungs. Due to its proximity to his heart, and the Chief’s current state, Bloom found it inadvisable to operate at that time.
“Very dangerous but not necessarily fatal.” was the verdict Dr. Bloom gave to the gaggle of reporters, policemen and onlookers that assembled outside, even if in the back of his mind he probably knew better. With today’s level of medicine, Hennessy’s wound to his lungs would be something very serious. The dismal state of medicine in 1890 New Orleans virtually guaranteed it was a death sentence. The doctors gave him enough opiates to assuage his pain, but not enough to render him unconscious or even semi-conscious, as evidenced by the conversations he held over the course of the next several hours, before his demise.
David Hennessy was adamant to those present he would survive this. Against his wishes, his mother was summoned, as was a priest, who gave him the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church. At one point a Police Sergeant Richard Walsh, who had just come from the scene of the crime, questioned Hennessy as to the identity of his attackers. Twice Hennessy denied knowing their identity, even though some later reports would state that he again blurted out that unnamed “dagos” had shot him. This was curious, given the fact that David Hennessy was well-acquainted with not only virtually every prominent Italian in the city, but with many if not most Italian criminals as well. He also knew all of the Matrangas and their stevedores on sight, having already dealt with them on previous occasions.
Mayor Joseph A. Shakespeare arrived with members of the police board. On hearing of Hennessy’s condition and who was allegedly responsible, Shakespeare gave orders to the city’s overwhelmingly Irish police force to round up every Italian (i.e. Sicilian) they came across! (8) Judge David Hollander, assistant recorder, arrived later to take the final statement of what was obviously a dying man. Despite his deteriorating condition, Hennessy refused to make any final statement, maintaining he would not die. Shortly after 9 AM, October 16th, 1890, Chief David C. Hennessy, the wunderkind of the New Orleans Metropolitan Police Department, breathed his last.
In the week that followed his murder, New Orleans police trampled the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, along with the homes of dozens of Sicilian immigrants. The first arrest in the case was that of a cobbler, Pietro Monasterio, who was savagely beaten by police! Mayor Shakespeare held a press conference in which he promised to “root out” Sicilian murder societies he claimed ‘infested’ New Orleans, though there was little evidence such a thing was true. He also claimed, with arrogant pomposity, these same Sicilian thugs were out to ‘silence’ him as well, but they would fail! Almost 115 years later, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s outlandish claim the CIA was out to “take him out” (due to his absurd claims about Hurricane Katrina) would call to mind Shakespeare’s earlier bombast. (9)
A total of 18 men (and one 14-y.o. boy) were arrested and charged with murdering Chief Hennessy. 10 were charged with being principals (even though “eyewitnesses” claimed to have seen only five men); 9 others were charged with being accessories before the fact. All were held in Parish Prison.
The Principals The Accessories
Pietro Natali James Caruso
Antonio Scaffidi Rocco Geraci
Charles Traina Asperi Marchesi
Antonio Bagnetto Joseph P. Macheca
Manuel Politz Charles Matranga
Antonio Marchesi Charles Patorno
Pietro Monasterio Frank Romero
Bastion Incardona John Caruso
Loretto Comitz Charles Pietzo
Salvador Sinceri
Shortly after his arrest and detention in the parish prison, Antonio Scaffidi was shot and seriously wounded by one Thomas Duffy, by police accounts a no-account who was able to smuggle a pistol into the prison!
The trial was delayed until February 28, 1891 to allow the Provenzano trial to finish. When the time for the Hennessy murder trial came, only nine of the defendants were tried. Even before the trial began, Mayor Shakespeare’s anti-Sicilian propaganda machine was at full throttle! He issued an ominous statement to the press that said, in part:
“We owe it to ourselves and to everything that we hold sacred in this life to see to it that this blow is the last. We must teach these people [i.e. Sicilians] a lesson they will not forget for all time. What the means are to reach this end, I leave to the wisdom of the council to devise.” (10)
The “council” to which Shakespeare was referring was the “Committee of 50”; a shadowy group made up of 50 of New Orleans’ ‘finest citizens’ (read that: rich folk) who took it upon themselves to investigate the Hennessy murder. Why Mayor Shakespeare and the members of the council did not leave it to the Metropolitan Police to handle this “investigation” will become apparent at the end.
In the days before the beginning of the Hennessy murder trial the Provenzanos were retried and found “not guilty”, with all remaining charges against them dropped. Apparently the upcoming trial against the Matrangas was more important than seeing justice done for a shot-up group of “dagos”. This drew the ire of the editor of the Daily Picayune, a New Orleans newspaper, who predicted (probably correctly) that it would be harder than ever to convince Italian immigrants to cooperate with authorities against Italian criminals.
In the weeks before the beginning of the Hennessy trial, all 19 of the defendants (none of whom were offered bail) were routinely beaten by prison guards looking to force a confession. One of the detained, Emmanuele Polizzi (Manuel Politz), began to show the unmistakable signs of severe mental illness while in prison. Unbeknownst to the prisoners, or their legal team, the Committee of 50 had placed a Pinkerton detective, Frank DeMaio (aka Antonio Ruggiero) inside the parish prison posing as a counterfeiter in an attempt to gather incriminating evidence against the accused. This was done because the council’s legal advisers informed them the case against the accused was weak, at best. DeMaio was unable to get any solid evidence, but he was able to play upon the fears of a deranged man before leaving the prison.
In order to prevent this obviously long article from becoming a small book, the details of the trial itself shall be condensed considerably. It was necessary to go into some detail about events leading up to the trial in order to give the reader a clearer picture of why what happened, happened. The horrific event following the trial, and the fallout from it, are the pertinent details of this story.
Suffice to say, not one of the 12 men who sat on the jury at the Hennessy murder trial were of Italian origin. So much for a “jury of one’s peers”. The jury foreman, Jacob Seligman, was the victim of mob threats even before the beginning of the trial (he was a Jew, after all). An attempt to prevent Mr. Seligman from sitting on the jury, by one Oliver T. Nobles, fizzled when Nobles’ accusations were found to be baseless, and Nobles himself apparently was a liar!
One of the most interesting aspects of this trial was the way in which many of the major figures in it had been connected to Chief Hennessy in some way. The presiding magistrate, Judge Joshua G. Baker, had presided over the first Provenzano trial, where Hennessy and the New Orleans police had testified on behalf of the accused. The district attorney, Charles Luzenberg, was a son of the judge who had presided over the trial where Hennessy had been charged with murdering Thomas Devereaux. Even one of the attorneys for the defense, Lionel Adams, had represented Hennessy during the Devereaux murder trial. Yet at no point did anyone, especially in the local media, bother to raise the question of conflict of interest.
Another interesting aspect was the testimony of one John Daure, a barkeep the prosecution called to testify. Luzenberg claimed he had testified in front of the grand jury, even though Lionel Adams could not find his name on the list of grand jury witnesses! Adams thoroughly discredited his testimony.
In fact, much of the testimony of the prosecution’s witnesses would have been laughable had it not been for the deadly seriousness of the circumstances! For starters, several of them entered statements that clearly contradicted those of other alleged “eyewitnesses”. In another instance, a housepainter named Peeler testified he saw Antonio Scaffidi wearing a black oilcloth at the scene of the shooting (he had earlier seen an oilcloth at the police station). He even pointed to said oilcloth and was adamant that was the one. Asked if Scaffidi had doubled it up before putting it on, Peeler responded “No.” The problem? If Peeler was telling the truth, Scaffidi would have had to have been a giant, as the oilcloth in question was eight feet long! (11) Another “witness” by the name of Butler had Scaffidi wearing a yellow oilcloth.
Then there was the matter of Maunel Politz (Emmanele Polizzi). If there was any doubt as to this man’s state of mind in the parish prison, it was gone during the trial. Politz was obviously severely mentally ill (he was probably schizophrenic). He also had a pronounced case of necrophobia (irrational fear of death). Prosecution witnesses had him wearing a moustache when he was supposed to have delivered guns to a Pietzo’s grocery the same day a Dr. Kelly saw him. The only problem was, Dr. Kelly testified that Politz was not wearing a moustache when he saw him that same day. Five of Politz’s neighbors also testified that he never wore a moustache in all the time they knew him! Rumors also swirled that Politz had “confessed” to being a member of the Mafia and was preparing to testify against his co-conspirators. Due to his aberrant behavior in and out of court, however, Judge Baker ruled any such confession inadmissible.
Finally there was the matter of William “Billy” O’Connor, Chief Hennessy’s friend and one of the first people on the scene after the shooting. For reasons still unknown, the prosecution never called him as a witness. J.C. Roe, the Boylan security officer detailed to watch Hennessy’s house (Hennessy did, after all, have a lot of enemies in New Orleans) likewise was never called to testify, even though in the initial reports he claimed to have seen the assassins.
Given such a flimsy case, it was hardly surprising (at least by today’s standards of jurisprudence) when the jury returned with verdicts of either “not guilty” or “mistrial” for all the defendants. Gasps filled the courtroom. The spectators were obviously disappointed the jury decided to follow the rules concerning “reasonable doubt”. Instead of being immediately released, however, the defendants were remanded to their jail cells. There was a second charge of “lying in wait to commit murder”. Judge Baker, though, ruled “their lives cannot be again imperiled by the law, and the State will in a day or two nolle pros the case and the men will go free”. At least, this is the excuse he gave to justify holding the men for what was to come.
The members of the Committee of 50 moved quickly to “salvage a victory from the jaws of defeat.” Years earlier, another Southerner, John Wilkes Booth, had used that same rationale for murdering President Abraham Lincoln! The day after the verdicts were read, this notice appeared in every leading newspaper in New Orleans:
“All good citizens are invited to attend a mass meeting on Saturday, March 14th, at 10 o’clock A.M., at Clay Statue, to take steps to remedy the failure of justice in the Hennessy case. Come prepared for action.” (12)
An estimated 10,000 people showed up for the meeting. Rumors (no doubt spread by members of the Committee) the jury had been fixed helped in no small measure to fuel the anger of the huge crowd. A leading New York City newspaper wrote: “There was a crowd of young and old men, black and white, but mostly of the best element.”
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| Storming Parish Prison |
Across town, in the Italian section, people were celebrating news of the verdict. Now, they reasoned, they would no longer have to hide their heads in shame. Now things would get back to normal. In that they severely underestimated the murderous and vengeful proclivities of their erstwhile Confederate neighbors.
At the same time, New Orleans’ Sicilians prepared to celebrate the birthday of King Umberto I of Italy, a major holiday at the time, not just in Italy but among members of the Italian Diasporas. Ironically, the displays associated with the upcoming celebration fed the anger of the growing lynch mob, who erroneously believed the festivities were meant to “rub their faces in it”.
Across town, the lynch mob, now brave enough (due to vastly superior numbers) to carry out their gruesome work, marched towards the parish prison. One John Wickliffe, a lawyer from Kentucky (and expellee from West Point), put the final nail in the coffin of Justice when he asked the crowd: “Within the walls of the parish prison are confined a number of men declared innocent by a jury of the murder of Chief Hennessy. Are those men to go free? Is the execrable Mafia to be allowed to flourish in this city?”
“No!” the crowd shouted in unison. Witnesses said the noise was deafening! It was undoubtedly a scene analogous to the roars of the bloodthirsty Roman mobs that long ago frequented Emperor Nero’s Circus Maximus.
In all fairness to the New Orleans Metropolitan Police, members of the Fourth Precinct tried to divert the angry mob. Realizing though, they were up against a human hurricane, they gave up. As the lynch mob approached the prison, a childish taunt began in an unknown corner that soon rose to a chorus throughout the crowd.
“Who killa dey Chief?” It was a taunt members of New Orleans’ Sicilian community would become well-acquainted with for decades to come.
To his credit, Warden Lemuel Davis of the parish prison tried to save his jail’s Sicilian prisoners, at great risk to himself, but it was in vain. In the end, the mob stormed the prison, killing a total of 11 prisoners, all Sicilian. Another six men sustained wounds so severe they later died, for a total of 17 killed. It should be noted that five of the eleven men killed on March 14th had never been tried. Witnesses later reported many members of the mob had expressed a desire to lynch all 12 members of the jury, as well! (13)
The bodies of those murdered that day were displayed and every one of the thousands of members of the mob was allowed to pass by to view them, thus insuring their complicity in the largest mass-lynching in American history.
Reaction to the murders was divided among American newspapers (and Americans) at that time. Teddy Roosevelt was quoted as saying the lynching was “…rather a good thing” (This coming from a future New York City police commissioner). The government of Italy suspended diplomatic relations with the U.S. and there was, for a time, even talk of war between the two countries!
The fallout from the lynching was incredible and far-reaching! Anti-Italian demonstrations were held in cities across America. Nativists, like the Italian-hating Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and the Nordicist Madison Grant, invoked the murder of Chief Hennessy to push for legislation restricting Southern & Eastern European immigration into this country on the grounds such peoples were “inferior”. Their efforts culminated in the passage of the infamous Immigration Act of 1924, which put severe restrictions on immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, while ironically leaving the door wide open for immigration from Latin America (hey, cheap labor was still needed!).
American nationalists north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line used the Hennessy murder case to help dissipate the simmering tensions between North and South that still lingered long after the end of the American Civil War. After all, they reasoned, Northerners or Southerners were no longer the problem with this country, it was those evil dagos!
Hawks in the U.S. Senate used the tensions between America and Italy to push for monies to beef up America’s navy to where it would be “second to none”. This new, improved navy would be used several years later in America’s expansionist war against the Spanish Empire (April-August, 1898). The Spanish-American War made America a world power and set it on its future course to becoming (what many charge) the “police force” of the planet. Our ominously huge fiscal deficit and national debt are both the result of this.
The jurors in the Hennessy murder trial would pay dearly for their verdict. Jacob Seligman was forced to leave New Orleans, never to return. Other jurors lost their jobs. All suffered financially as a result.
Leading members of the Committee of 50 (and their cronies) on the other hand, profited greatly from the lynching. George W. Vandervoort, for example, who was among the first to blame Hennessy’s murder on the “Mafia,” passed, with the aid of the city council, an ordinance giving control of all business on the docks to a syndicate called the “Louisiana Construction & Improvement Company”. One of the main members of this group was a Maurice Hart, who was a leading member of the lynch mob.
James D. Houston, another important member of the mob, rose to power along the docks, as did E.T. Leache, a signer of the notice calling for the lynching. The list goes on. As these wealthy Anglo businessmen moved in, Italian businessmen were invariably forced out. It makes one wonder who was really running a “Mafia” at that time!
Joseph A. Shakespeare, going against an earlier promise, ran for a third term as mayor and lost. Political analysts stated the Italian vote was pivotal in the election.
Charles Matranga, who was supposedly the “capo” of the alleged “Matranga Mafia family”, survived the onslaught of the parish prison. If he was, in fact, a member of the Sicilian Mafia, he certainly had a strange way of showing it! For starters, he testified against the Provenzanos (who were probably the ones who ambushed him and his stevedores). True Mafiosi refuse to cooperate with civil authorities, citing the Mafia code of “omerta”. In fact, the original definition of the word “Mafia” was an attitude of distrust and hostility against civil authority, born out by centuries of foreign oppression. This attitude would not begin to be broken until very recent times.
Matranga would also spend the remaining decades of his life living quietly. He would never again be arrested and charged with any crime. These facts conveniently elude “historians” who still contend Matranga was in fact, a member of the Sicilian Mafia. More than likely the Provenzanos and Matrangas were simply feuding families who resorted to murder to settle their differences. This was hardly unique in the Old South (can you say “Hatfields and McCoys”?).
The canard spread by Anglo racists that Sicilians brought gangsterism to America (especially the South) is also totally without merit. Gangsterism was already in place here long before the first significant waves of Sicilians hit these shores. As early as the 1790s Philadelphia, the “city of brotherly love”, was terrorized by the infamous Dolan gang (until its leaders were all arrested, tried, convicted and properly hanged!). The Irish Mob was well-entrenched here long before large groups of Sicilian immigrants arrived. Let’s also not forget the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camelia and the White League. All these organizations used the same tactics (terrorism, racketeering, secret meetings and murder) which would later be pinned on the Sicilian Mafia. As noted Italian-American author Richard Gambino once pointedly asked: “Which ethnic groups learned what from whom?” (14)
The first truly objective examination of the evidence concerning the Hennessy murder case was done by Federal District Attorney William Grant (in a report dated April 27th, 1891) to U.S. Attorney General William H. H. Miller. Since it is rather long, I shall just reproduce here the most pertinent part:
“I have not attempted to examine into the guilt or innocence of the persons accused of the murders of Hennessy. The evidence in this case against them submitted is voluminous, covering some 800 pages of typewriting. Both as a whole and in detail it is exceedingly unsatisfactory, and is not, to my mind, conclusive one way or the other [Emphasis added]. I have endeavored to ascertain whether they have been lawabiding [sic] citizens since their arrival in this country, but have not been able to connect them with any criminal practices prior to their indictment in the Hennessy case, except in the case of Manuel Politz, who is reported to have assaulted and cut a person in Austin, Tex., some years before.”
The lynching of Italians did not stop after March 14th. In fact, historical records show that after blacks, one of the ethnic groups most often lynched in America were Italians.
To help justify their actions, the leaders of the Committee of 50 decided to make the late Chief David Hennessy a martyr for their cause. Newspaper publishers whitewashed his checkered past, making him out to be a pillar of the community. The truth of the matter is, at best he was a man of dubious character. Nonetheless, he did not deserve to be murdered, but he did deserve closure. This was something the Committee of 50 denied him. Despite the beliefs of some, the truth is no one will ever know for sure who it was that gunned down Hennessy. (15)
As one can imagine, after the lynching, New Orleans was not a popular destination for new arrivals in this country.
The city today is a different place in many ways from those days. 2/3 of the city’s population today is black, who are now well-represented in the town’s political machine. Long gone are the taunts of “Who killa dey Chief”? Most New Orleaneans today are still busy trying to recover from the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Katrina. It should be noted, though, the city fathers of New Orleans never apologized for what happened that day. To the best of my knowledge, no memorial exists to remember all the murdered. In fact, most New Orleaneans probably don’t even remember the case at all.
There are those of us, though, who still remember. We shall never forget! For as long as there are members of the Diaspora of Due Sicilie, we shall remember the time when an entire American city committed mass murder, and got away with it!
Bibliography:
1 Harper’s Weekly, July 12, 1862.
2 http://www.ustica.org/genealogy/italian_brigade.htm
3 Tom Smith: The Crescent City Lynchings, pgs. 4-6.
4 Joseph Gentile: The Innocent Lynched, pgs. 50-52.
5 ibid, pgs. 52-55.
6 Tom Smith: The Crescent City Lynchings, pgs. 40-42.
7 ibid: pgs. 53-65.
8 Richard Gambino: Vendetta, pg. 7.
9 http://oraclesyndicate.twoday.net/stories/950671
10 Joseph Gentile: The Innocent Lynched, pgs. 16-17.
11 Tom Smith: The Crescent City Lynchings, pg. 156.
12 ibid: pg. 213.
13 ibid. pg. 229.
14 Richard Gambino: Vendetta, pg. 141.
15 Joseph Gentile: The Innocent Lynched, pgs. 101-106.
Further reading:
- Joseph Gentile: The Innocent Lynched: The Story of Eleven Italians Lynched in New Orleans, Writer’s Showcase, 2000.
- Tom Smith: The Crescent City Lynchings: The Murder of Chief Hennessy, the New Orleans “Mafia” Trials, and the Parish Prison Mob, The Lyons Press, 2007.
- Richard Gambino: Vendetta, Guernica Editions, 2000.
Amended on March 27, 2017
